Brick
by acatwithshoes
Summary: As she reached out to pull the door open, he grabbed her sleeve to stop her. “Wait. We don't have to do this.” ONESHOT. Contains heavy subject matter. Can't handle it, don't read it. Loe.


**DISCLAIMERS**

**1. First and foremost, THIS STORY CONTAINS NO REAL PEOPLE. It does, however, contain characters from Hannah Montana. I don't own these characters.**

**2. This story contains heavy, possibly controversial subject matter: abortion. If you don't feel that you can handle it, feel free to hit the back button. I won't be offended.**

**3. Though this story has to do with abortion, it has NOTHING to do with the politics of it. Whether you think it's right or wrong, this is just about two scared people.**

Joe got up early that morning. Not by choice, by necessity. The sooner they got there, the sooner this would be over. With great effort, he pulled on his clothes. If only he was still sleeping… As quietly as he could, he grabbed his car keys and stepped out of his room. As he started down the hall, he realized that he wasn't alone.

"Where are you going?" Joe looked back over his shoulder. It was Nick. He was standing with his arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe to his room and looking at his brother quizzically.

Joe hesitated. "Nowhere. Just go back to bed. I'll be back in a few hours." Nick took a breath to say something. "_Please_," Joe added before he had the chance to protest.

Nick frowned but didn't push him on it. "Whatever," he replied groggily and retreated back into his bedroom.

Meanwhile, Lilly was already sitting on her front step waiting for him. She folded her hands over her abdomen and questioned for the millionth time if she was making the right choice. She wasn't sure if it was a baby, but she knew it seemed like _something_.

Joe wandered up Lilly's front walk and found her staring blankly on the steps. He knelt down in front of her. "Morning," he said, trying and failing to fake a smile.

She looked at him for second, then stood up and walked over to his car. He followed and sat back down in the drivers seat. As they pulled out of the driveway, Joe flipped the windshield wipers once. It was beginning to sprinkle.

They instantly fell into an uneasy silence, Joe busy driving and Lilly busy watching how her breath condensed on the glass as she leaned her head on the window. "How are you feeling?" Joe asked sincerely.

"Sick."

"Yeah," he said with a nod. "Me too."

They were quiet until they reached their destination. After parking the car, Joe got out and ran around to Lilly's side to open her door for her. "Thank you," she mumbled and took off across the small parking lot.

As she reached out to pull the door open, he grabbed her sleeve to stop her. "Wait," he said, moving her over to the side. "We, we don't have to do this." She refused to meet his gaze, instead turning her face up towards the sky and the pathetic mist of a rain that was falling. "Lilly," he tried again.

She took a shaky breath and turned to him. "Yes we do, Joe." She paused. "Besides, would you really want it any other way?"

He hung his head, too ashamed to say it. They both knew the answer anyway.

"That's what I thought," she whispered.

She stepped away from him and slipped inside the door. He wordlessly followed. As she went to the front desk to give them her name, he sat down in one of the classic uncomfortable waiting room chairs that seemed to be exactly the same everywhere you went. Aimlessly, he began to fiddle with a loose string on the underside of the armrest, hoping to distract himself; it wasn't working.

"Now we wait, I guess," Lilly said as she sat down next to him.

"We wait," he agreed. Looking up, he found her staring off into space. He reached over to take her hand, wanting to comfort her, but the reassuring action seemed mechanical, sterile.

It wasn't long before Lilly's name was called. Joe told her he loved her before she was ushered back into a room where he wasn't allowed. He was too nervous to just sit there, so he left to take a walk, get some air.

As he ambled down the residential street, he passed some of the more dedicated joggers in the neighborhood who weren't put off by the rain. He ignored their polite "Good mornings." He was angry with them, resentful that they were going on with their normal lives despite the fact that it was so clearly the end of the world.

Only several blocks later, he noticed something that interested him. It was a huge church. He read the sign that stood in the lawn. St. Jude Catholic Church. Joe knew that St. Jude was the patron saint of hopeless cases. Pure desperation. He winced at how appropriate it felt.

He took off his hat and walked up the concrete steps into the church, stopping in the foyer to dip his finger into the holy water and cross himself. It was an automatic process, something he had done every time he'd entered a church since he was little, but today he was very aware of it, and it felt almost foreign.

A low drone could be heard emanating from the next room. As he stepped into the chapel, he discovered that it was coming from the some thirty elderly parishioners who had gathered to say the Rosary before morning mass.

For a minute, he stood dumbly in the aisle, staring around at the church. It was obviously very old. The first things that caught his eye were the little inlets all along the outside walls. They were all topped with two cherubs, and each held a life-sized statue of a member of the Holy Family or an Apostle. They reminded him very much of the statues in his old church back home that used to creep him out so badly when he was younger.

He was interrupted by a quiet "Pardon me." He turned quickly to see an old man smiling at him patiently. Joe was standing in his way. He stepped to the side to let the gentleman pass. As he did so, Joe had meant to say, "I'm sorry, sir," but was fairly certain it had come out as an indiscernible mumble.

He slipped into one of the pews near the back and knelt down, resting his folded hands on the pew in front of him. He didn't have his Rosary beads with him, but he could still follow along. Taking a deep breath, he joined in. The familiar words were somewhat comforting, perhaps because they were just that: familiar. Joe had been starved for any sort of normalcy since this whole thing had begun two weeks ago.

_Lilly had told him to meet her here. It sounded really important, and he was a little worried. Was she going to break up with him? He sat in the sand, throwing pebbles into the water until she arrived._

_She softly said his name and he jumped up to greet her. He was about to pull her into a hug when he noticed the anguished look on her face._

"_Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, taking her hands._

_Lilly bit her lip. "Well, like I said, I have to tell you something. And it's… pretty big."_

"_Should I sit down for this?" Joe asked with a small smile. It faded quickly as her eyes began to well up with tears. "You can tell me."_

_She shook her head. "I'm scared. I'm scared of how you'll react." The tears were beginning to spill over._

_That broke his heart. She was _scared_ of him. She didn't ever need to be scared of him. "Lilly," he said, cupping her face in his hands. "I love you. You can tell me anything. I promise I won't be mad." He never could have predicted what she said next._

"_Joe, I'm late."_

_It took a moment for it to click, but when it did, his eyes grew wide. "So you, you…" he stuttered, not daring to say it._

"_I might be pregnant," she finished quietly._

_He didn't know what to do, so he just hugged her. She started crying harder. He was too stunned to cry. He was too stunned to do anything._

_After that, they went to the drug store and bought a test. As usual, there was no one home at her house, so they went there._

_Joe waited in her room while she was in the bathroom taking it. A minute later, she was back. She set the test down on her desk and sat down next to Joe on her bed._

"_How long do we have to wait?" he asked._

"_Three minutes."_

_Joe set the alarm on his cell phone and tossed it down on the bedside table. He pulled her to him and kissed the top of her head as he began to think back over the last couple of weeks._

"_This would explain why you haven't been feeling good lately, wouldn't it?" he mused. Lilly nodded. "And why you've been so tired."_

"_Yeah," she said quietly._

"_You're pregnant, aren't you?" he concluded dazedly._

"_Yeah, I think so," she squeaked as she began to cry again._

"_Shh," Joe soothed and hugged her tighter. "It's okay," he whispered, doubting his own words._

_They both looked up as Joe's cell began to ring, signaling that their wait was done. The last three minutes had felt like an eternity, but they were finally over. It was time to find out. They looked at each other, then across the room at the little white stick on the desk._

"_You go do it," Lilly said. "I can't."_

_Joe nodded. He gave her one last kiss, got up, and slowly made his way over to it. Swallowing hard, he picked it up and inspected it. Finally, he looked up at her. "Oh Lilly," he said gently as he, too, began to cry._

_A couple days passed before they even really discussed it. It felt too unreal. In a way, it was like they were childishly hoping that if they didn't acknowledge it, it would somehow go away. But obviously they knew better than that._

"_Joseph," Lilly said bracingly._

_Joe's eyes shot up when he heard his full first name. "Yeah?"_

"_We need to figure this out."_

_He put down his notebook and leaned forward to put his elbows on the table, resting his chin in his hands. "Yeah, I know," he said slowly._

"_So… what are we going to do?"_

_How would he say this to her? How could he tell her what he wanted? "Well," he began uncomfortably, "I never thought I'd be saying this, but I don't really think we have a lot of options. I mean, you're going off to college really soon, and I have a career…"_

"_I don't think our families could handle it," Lilly said lamely, starting to tear up again. It really felt like crying was all she'd been doing lately. "But still," she continued, "I don't want to get rid of it."_

"_I don't either, but what else are we going to do?" Joe paused and brought a hand up to wipe his eyes. "I… I don't want to put you through a pregnancy. And we have our lives to worry about..."_

"_There's too much going on already to throw a baby into the mix," she said quietly._

_And that was pretty much it. They weren't happy with their decision, but it still seemed better than the alternatives. It was a classic "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Catch-22._

_They didn't discuss it much after that; it just made them feel worse about the entire thing. The appointment was made, and they spent the next two weeks trying to pretend that their worlds weren't collapsing in around them._

_They had both agreed not to tell anyone. A couple times Joe almost broke down and told Kevin everything, but he stopped himself. The whole thing was too devastating to discuss out loud. It was hard for him to pinpoint just what he thought about it. It seemed so hazy. There was sadness. And confusion. And guilt, lots of guilt. Mostly for what he'd done to Lilly. And something else… maybe embarrassment?_

_As for Lilly… She felt like she was suffocating every time she thought of it. It was supposed to be the happiest news you could ever get, so why did it feel like this?_

At some point, Joe realized that he had stopped reciting Hail Mary's and begun to sob. He took a deep breath, trying to pull himself together and looked at his watch. It was probably happening right now…

There was a tight feeling in his chest, but he ignored it and stood up. Before he headed back, he decided that he would light a candle. They were in the side chapel underneath a tall stained glass window. Joe looked up at it, admiring how the raindrops looked as they dripped down the soon to be disembodied face of John the Baptist. "You knew what you were getting yourself into," he muttered.

He mentally rattled off one last prayer for Lilly and lit one of the small candles. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet. He took out all the money he had on him, $42, and tossed it into the coffee can of quarters that sat on the ground next to the table full of candles. Cringing slightly at his feeble attempt to begin to right things, he took off toward the door.

As he crossed himself once more with the holy water, he heard the church bells begin to ring. Mass would be starting soon. With one last look up to the altar, he pushed open the door and headed down the steps, making his way through the people who were on their way in.

He did his best to ignore the confused looks of the churchgoers as they did their best not to gawk at the disheveled young man with the tear-stained face. Even worse, though, came the concerned and worried looks, the ones that let him know that they pitied him. _They don't know what I've done. They don't know what I'm responsible for._

He hung his head and stuffed his hands in his pocket, slowly heading back the way he had come. It was supposed to be about over now. He was supposed to be finished with it. So why didn't it feel like it? He'd be lying if he said he felt no relief at all, but the whole world seemed just as skewed as it had when he'd gotten up that morning.

"I think I just got excommunicated," he contemplated aloud.

As he brought his hands up to rub his eyes, something caught his attention. It was his shiny silver purity ring. What a perfect way to add insult to injury. He laughed at himself mirthlessly, wondering why he still wore it. If he had been in a better mood, he may have been able to appreciate the self-deprecating dark comedy of it all, but he couldn't. Not this morning. He took one last look at it before pulling it off and throwing it down. He could hear it clink against the sidewalk behind him, and part of him wanted to run back and pick it up again. But he didn't.

Long before he cared to, he made it back to the clinic. He wanted to see her more than anything, but he didn't want to have to face her… Letting go of a breath he had only scarcely been aware that he was holding, he walked back through the glass doors. There she was, sitting in the same chair she been in earlier, wearing the same vacant expression.

"Lilly," he called out gently.

Upon hearing her name, she looked up. "You're back." She seemed nearly happy to see him. Nearly.

"I am. Sorry if you had to wait."

"It's okay," she said blankly as she got up to join him.

Joe held open the door for her, and they walked out into the parking lot. "Um, are you okay?" he asked cautiously.

She leaned back against the car door and cocked her head to one side, thinking. "I'm just as okay as you are, Joey."

Without thinking, he reached forward and grabbed her in a hug. "I'm sorry."

**So there it was. It was a little meandering, but that seems to be my style. Sorry if it was depressing. I just wanted to take this storyline and do something with it that's different than what I've seen so far. That's why it's Joe-centric and why they went through with it.**

**I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I really am interested to see what people think of this. I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading.**

**-Charlotte**


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